Intel Elevates Its Mainstream x86 Processors into HPC Space

Dell is rolling out three new PowerEdge servers based on Intel's Xeon 7500 "Nehalem EX" processor. The move comes a day after Dell unveiled another PowerEdge system that is running on Advanced Micro Devices' new eight- to 12-core Opteron 6000 "Magny-Cours" processor.
 
The Dell servers include two rack-optimized systems, the 2U (3.5-inch) PowerEdge R810 and the 4U (7-inch) R910. Both servers are four-socket systems, which means they each can offer up to 32 processing cores.
 
The third system is the four-socket M910 blade server. Dell's M1000e enclosure can fit up to eight M910s, according to Bryan Payne, senior manager for PowerEdge product planning at Dell.
 
With the two rack systems, Dell is offering two new features aimed at giving businesses greater flexibility around memory and better resiliency in their virtualized environments, Payne said. Dell's Flex Memory Bridge lets IT administrators decide whether to ramp up the memory capacity on the server or the processing power.

They can either populate all four sockets with Intel's processors, or use two sockets for the CPUs and put Dell's Flex Memory Bridges into the other two sockets, which will add up to another half-terabyte of memory.
 
"It will allow you to support more virtual machines on a single system," Payne said in an interview.
 
Dell's Fail Safe Virtualization feature offers greater failover protection in virtualized environments by offering an embedded hypervisors in the servers, he said.
 
The Fail Safe Virtualization feature is available in both the new Intel servers and the R815 server running on the new AMD Opterons, Payne said. However, the Flex Memory Bridge technology was designed in collaboration with Intel, and is available only on the Intel-based systems.
 
"The Flex Memory Bridge is tied into Intel's architecture," he said.
 
Payne touted the R910's ability to offer up to 1TB of memory and its expanded I/O capabilities, including the option of 10GbE. He said the system offers a 219 percent improve in performance over the curretn PowerEdge R900 -- "The raw performance is increasing dramatically" -- and 200 percent gains in energy efficiency.

Senior Editor Jeff Burt contributed to this story.